Forest mismanagement

A focused approach, transparency and accountability can save tigers.

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Mihir Srivastava

May 28, 2010

ISSUE DATE: June 7, 2010

UPDATED: June 8, 2010 11:55 IST

Tigers are the most researched animal in India, if not the world, and that should help the cause of its conservation. But in India, the issue is politicised. Tiger conservation is now looked as denying tribals the right to live.

Tiger bones and skin seized from Corbett National Park in 2009

While it is easy to blame hunting tribes for the dwindling tiger population, the forest management is also responsible. In Panna, 30 tigers were lost in three years despite written warnings and campaigns by NGOs, wildlife experts and the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) constituted by the Supreme Court.

The state Forest Department was instead busy covering up its inaction. The then principal secretary, forests, Avani Vaish, in his letter to the CEC dated April 5, 2005, said, "The sentiments (Panna tigers are threatened) is, unfortunately, almost directly quoted from the report of a disgruntled researcher who bears a personal grudge against the park management." In five years, Panna lost all its tigers.

Shockingly, the officers in Panna's Forest Department were later promoted. Vaish is now the chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh, a state with the highest tiger population in the country. Sadly, official apathy is rampant and unchecked.

Rajesh Gopal, member-secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), says, "We have to work through the system. We cannot antagonise the state governments. We in Delhi and Bhopal cannot be expected to know what is happening locally." In other words, passing the buck. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) report by NTCA is now gathering dust for a year. The SIT report has the details of poachers and their whereabouts. If only the Government had acted promptly, at least a dozen tigers could have been saved. Says Belinda Wright, executive director of Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI): "We need to examine when negligence becomes connivance."

The message is clear: Tiger is dispensable. Habitat destruction is as big a problem as poaching is. Says renowned tiger expert Bittu Sahgal: "The trouble is that politicians want tigers to live in habitated areas." Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment suggests a greater role and share for the locals in the management and benefits coming out of forests and tourism, ignoring the fact that there are economic incentives to kill tigers over the preservation of forests.

Only intelligence-driven enforcement can break the poacher-trader nexus, believes Raghunandan Singh Chundavat, a tiger expert whom Vaish had referred to as disgruntled researcher. He calls for greater transparency and accountability in the way forests are managed and advocates protecting tiger habitat and main prey bases.

The other problem is the biggest market for tiger parts is China. It has tiger farms to breed the big cat and is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) agreement, which says that "tigers should not be bred for trade in their parts and derivatives."

The way out, as the International Tiger Coalition demands, is to phase out tiger farms and destroy stockpiles of tiger parts and derivatives. "This will send a clear message to consumers, enforcers and business that the use of the endangered Asian big cat skins and bones is over," stresses Debbie Banks, lead campaigner for the London-based Environmental Investigative Agency (EIA). But as of now, the poachers are getting a different message from China: go and hunt tigers.

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